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Graphical Improvements - Squeezing the most out of LoD?

apprendista

By apprendista
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apprendista Rookie

apprendista

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I'm looking to, as the topic says, squeeze as much visual quality and awesomeness into my Oblivion as possible. For now, I want to focus heavily LoD and the choices I have. After a lot of googling, forum searching, and rereading at TOTO, I've decided to use a combination of:

  • Better Tiling 4096 LOD Textures
  • Qarl's Compressed 4096 LoD Normal Maps
  • Koldorn's LOD Noise (strongest)
  • Qarl's Texture Pack 3 (original, none of that compressed business)

Lag? Not in a million years. I've included the QTP3 for now because it should help form a seamless transition between LoD to close-range (I assume). My problem is that while it looks much improved, it still retains the stench of immersion-breaking landscapes. It's still blocky, it's still scrambled, and frankly it looks like something I'd expect out of Thief II.

 

What could you recommend for LoD improvement? While texture-size is important for proper resolution, seamless is just as important. BT4096+QarlC4096+Loldorn's Noise should be all I need, right? Spare no resources, so give me the best.

 

Image included in the attachment, in reference to the blocks of texture beyond the lake.

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apprendista Rookie

apprendista

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Those both seem to be in decent order, and I've come across them before. My main concern, however is this:

 

The overall goal is to provide enhanced LOD visuals while also trying to preserve performance as much as possible. This all stems from my realization that even with a high end graphics card, full detail LOD meshes and textures are simply out of the question. The VRAM usage is causing large amounts of stuttering when trying to swap out the memory and not even Streamline 3.1 can keep up. This package has brought the VRAM usage under control and has had a huge impact on overall lag and stuttering.

 

It seems like, and this is without me actually using that mod yet, they're going for a reduced level of LoD texturing and thus balancing for preformance? Are they "better looking" than the two 4096 maps I'm using? Perhaps I'm not fully understanding, or rather misinterpreting, what they're doing differently than what I have now. Please explain?

Offtopic - what kind of computer monster you have ?

The parts that matter, so we can make better choices:

  • Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 (overclocked to 4Ghz and FSB to 1780)
  • Sata II 3.0@Gb/s Disk Drive
  • G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel (also running at 1780)
  • ATI PCI 2.0 4870 with 1Gb of GDDR5 ram, overclocked as well by ~20%

 

I appreciate the response, and help :) Don't stop yet! We can do this!

 

edit: I've uploaded a screen shot of the above recommended LoD mod + QTP3. It looks smoother, no doubt, but the textures are terrible and the entire area seems to lack shadows. On the other hand, my original screen shot looks HORRIBLY blocky. What causes that? Is there any way to get more detailed, but smoother LoD textures?

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apprendista Rookie

apprendista

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Interesting. I've combined Better Tiling 4096 + Qarls 4096 maps + the RAEVWD (with the qarl addition to it) and the noise replacer. I like it, a LOT. I'm not quite sure what happened to make it all blend in so well, but it's very nice. Screenshot enclosed. Anyone else with suggestion improvements, please keep it coming. I'd love to push this further.
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apprendista Rookie

apprendista

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are you sure they are installed correctly? cus qarl's texture pack doesn't really look like the screenies you posted.
From my experience, it is installed correctly.

 

Order of installation to Data folder:

  1. LoD stuff (koldorn's noise replacer, better tiling 4096 color maps, qarls compressed 4096 normal maps, raevwd+qarl_
  2. World Textures (QTP3, SI texture additions)
  3. Item textures (trees, books, etc)

 

That seems to work out fine for me. I think on those two initial shots I may have not done proper Archive Invalidation redirection. I'll double-check. And when I have a solution I feel is reproducible, I'll happily post it here. Keep the ideas coming! I appreciate everyone helping me.

 

edit: Scratch that, ever since I used raevwd, QTP3 seems to refuse to load. Even with archiveinvalidation (redirection). Thoughts?

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Vagrant0 Grand Master

Vagrant0

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Try getting rid of the noise replacer, it should get rid of some of the patchyness. Using a smaller normal map might also help since the one used seems to simulate way too much surface detail. If possible, you might want to try making your own using exported .raw files, adjusting them slightly, and converting them to a normal map.

 

Additionally, if your computer can handle it, you might want to try upping uGridsToLoad=5 to 7 instead. What this will do is make 1 more cell on all sides of you part of the active area, and use the real texturing instead of LOD. However, this requires quite a bit more system resources since you are essentially doubling the number of active cells and everything that might go with it.

Normal

XXXXX

XXXXX

XXOXX

XXXXX

XXXXX

 

With it at 7

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

XXXOXXX

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

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